1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a broadcasting receiver and a communication method using the broadcasting receiver.
2. Discussion of the Related Art
In an existing one-way cable television (TV) system, since necessary data is received through a down channel, an Internet protocol (IP) address is not required. In contrast, in a two-way cable TV system, since network communication using a down channel and an up channel is possible, an IP address for IP communication needs to be acquired. The cable TV system can perform communication according to RFC 2131 and RFC 2132 using a dynamic host configuration protocol (DHCP), for two-way IP communication.
In general, an IP address is allocated to a physical interface in one-to-one correspondence. For example, one IP address is allocated to one network card. If the number of network cards is two, two IP addresses may be allocated to the respective physical layers thereof. For example, on a Linux system, the IP addresses may be represented by interfaces eth0 and eth1, and the interfaces enable IP communication through the respective physical interfaces.
Currently, in order to implement the two-way cable TV system, total three IP addresses are required. Among them, a first IP address is used by a cable modem (eCM), another IP address is used by a host, and the other IP address is used by a cable card.
The cable modem can directly acquire the IP address from an IP address allocation server, and the host acquires an IP address for the host and an IP address for the cable card connected to the host. However, communication between an external network and a cable receiver including the cable modem, the host and the cable card are performed via the cable modem.
Since the cable card does not include a separate network interface, the host should acquire the IP address for the host and the IP address for the cable card. When the host performs IP networking, for example, a Linux network stack is used. Accordingly, it is easy to acquire the IP address for the host. However, the cable card only performs communication based on a host-cable card interface (CCIP) standard and does not include an interface which can perform IP network communication. Accordingly, it is impossible for the cable card to independently receive the IP address and perform the IP network communication.